Flash Fiction / One Sided Conversation
So when we were little my mum used to put us to sleep with this tape, yeah? Two little girls giggling and fighting to shove cold toes under the other one’s legs. And this tape of Dreaming stories.
There is a man in the room with us. He’s not old, I don’t think. He is tired. Content, though. The slow deep of his voice makes us quiet, sleepy. This country in long vowels, brown dust and warm black sky in each curl of his tongue. The stories he tells grow pictures, grow landscapes. Sky and dirt, y’know?
Most of it is forgotten. There’s only one story I remember and it’s stuck in my head lately. This is how I remember it.
There’s the emu and there’s the brolga. And the emu she’s big, right? Wide wings, long legs, strong heart. Queen of all birds. The brolga, well, she’s smaller. Prettier, more graceful, sure, but she’s less than the emu.
One day the brolga tucked her wings up, hid them, and found the emu. She says “Hey, emu! What’s with the wings? Don’t you read the magazines? Wings are so last year. Nobody’s wearing wings anymore.” And she laughs as she dances away. The emu, now she’s thinking about the other birds and what they’ll say when they see her big, clumsy wings. She’s the queen! She’s gotta look the part. She’s thinking, thinking.
She finds a rock, makes sure it’s a sharp one and heavy too. She lays her right wing down on the ground and she starts to hack at it with the rock. Ah! it hurts. But she keeps cutting, pushing aside the bloody feathers so she can get a nice clean line. After she’s done with that one, she turns and starts on the left, careful to keep the cuts even. The shock’s making her head light but she knows how important symmetry is in fashion.
Finally, she’s done, nothing but bloody stumps left of her glorious wings. Then she walks, leaving the piles of feather and flesh behind her. There’s the brolga sitting in the grass and the emu calls out “Girl, you seen my new shape? I’m lookin’ good without those wings.” The brolga, she just laughs and laughs. She stands and spreads her wide wings, dancing in her joy. And the emu knows she’s been tricked and knows what a fool she is.
Time goes on and the emu’s still angry and the brolga still laughs every time she sees the emu trudging along without her wings. The emu’s thinking, plotting, she’s got plans for that brolga. She’s got that girl in her sight.
So she watches, all the time watching. She sees the brolga feeding with her twelve little chicks and she sees how fine they are and how loved. She takes her own children and she hides all but two, the biggest ones. The emu takes those two to show the brolga, says “How do you feed so many chicks? No wonder they all grow up so small and weak. See mine? Just two so they grow strong like me.”
And the brolga sees the emu, sees how powerful she is and she gets to wondering. She looks at her babies and she thinks that she couldn’t ever leave ten of them. They’re her own and she loves them more than her beautiful white feathers or her graceful dancing. But then she’s thinking, maybe it’d be better. Maybe she could love the two better than she can the twelve and they’d be great like the emu, greater than the emu.
She makes up her mind and starts leading her children towards some big rocks. They’re calling at her, hungry, and she just walks. When they reach the first rock she picks up the smallest chick in her claw and slams her baby’s head sharply against the stone. Slams until it’s small skull is crushed and leaking. The rest, they’re screaming now. And she drops the tiny body and picks up the next one.
When she’s only got two left living and ten scattered bodies, she stops. Two beautiful little babies. She leads them back to the water to eat. She calls to the emu “I’ve done it. Now my children will not go hungry and they will grow as large as yours.”
The emu, she stares likes she’s seeing flood waters rising fast over the flat land. She turns and boos loudly. As she calls, ten squawking emu chicks come running out of the bush to join their siblings at their mother’s feet.
And the brolga knows she’s been tricked and knows that they’re both fools.
So there it is. Envy, pride and greed. You put these three together and what do you get? A pile of rotting flesh and ten dead baby birds. Childhood lessons, eh?
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
This 170 word review has not been unlocked.
This 34 word review has not been unlocked.
This 158 word review has not been unlocked.
This 74 word review has not been unlocked.
This 59 word review has not been unlocked.
This 101 word review has not been unlocked.
This 126 word review has not been unlocked.
This 63 word review has not been unlocked.
This 43 word review has not been unlocked.
This is disturbing but brilliant. It expresses it idea very well. But it does border on vulgarity; perhaps vulgarity is what we need to show us how alwful things can really be.
- add/view comments (0)
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
